Working Title: Gamer Rachel
by Get Real Or Die
Summary: Chapter 3: In which there's more on Coronado, the origin of Puck's behavior is revealed, and a fight is narrowly avoided Warnings: Puck's lack of knowledge of the Kinsey scale, alternate universes are explored, flashbacks, and constant freshmen insults.
1. New Friends Are Fun

AN: So apparently any glee fic I write is also crack!fic. I'm surprisingly okay with that. Post Bad Reputation, a video goes viral of Rachel being cheered up by her only true friends. Things get weird. Also, pretend that Glee has morning practices before school some days instead of in the afternoon.

Story Summary: In a world of Kurt/Mercedes/Quinn, Brittany/Santana/Kurt, and Mike/Matt/Mercedes a new OT3 friendship rises from the depths of McKinley High to rule the gamer world. Warnings: Jesse and VA bashing, unapologetic Rachel love, and Gossip Girl!Jacob

Alternate Title (only cause it wouldn't fit):

Thanks For (Not Throwing Beverages In My Face Anymore) Being There

At 7:20, Jesse St. James broke up with Rachel Berry in front of her Glee Club (and Brad, who was always there, oddly enough) and she poured her all into a heart breaking edition of 'Total Eclipse of The Heart'

At 7:45 Jacob Ben Israel uploaded the video of the scene and its aftermath. But the most interesting content was the 7 minutes after the rest of New Directions left.

Rachel's sitting crumpled like a rag doll at the end of the stage. She had stopped crying and simply sat there staring unknowingly towards where the one and only Gossip Girl of McKinley High, Jacob Ben Israel himself, sat secluded behind the stage. He found her gaze unnerving and creepy but shrugged inwardly and thought the blankness was devastation and would only cause more people to rewatch the video again and again.

He startles momentarily when the doors to the choir room burst open and Azimo and Karofsky strutted in like they owned the place. He starts to sweat the moment they look around and make a beeline for Rachel. He doesn't see a slushie anywhere around but he doesn't think the jocks would be above hitting a girl. He listens above the pounding in his chest when Karosky starts to speak.

"Shit Berry, you look like someone just told you they were re-making Funny Girl into an action movie starring Megan Fox."

Rachel sighs before she stands up and dusts off her skirt. "As amusing as this is, I really need to be anywhere but here right now." As she goes to jump off the stage, Azimo holds up a hand.

"I'm guessing your film debut didn't go like you planned? The rest of the geeks didn't like your wittle song?" He bats his eyelashes as he adopts a sing-song baby voice, creepily reminiscent to Bellatrix Lestrange from Order of The Phoenix. Karofsky flips out a hand and slaps Azimo in the chest.

"Not cool man. She looks like she was crying." He shifts, looking momentarily uncomfortable before his face brightens. "Tell me we get to finally beat up St. James."

Rachel jumps off the stage, looking horrified. "No! While it is true Jesse decided to end our romantic entanglement, it happens to be my fault. I may have sliced Noah and Finn into my film alongside Jesse as the leading man and he may have taken it more intentionally disrespectful than I had hoped he would have." She shoves her hands on her hips and starts ranting at a faster pace. "So of course he took it upon himself to blatantly humiliate me in front of the rest of glee club which may have seemed the thing to do at the time but Jesse would have gone a long way towards showing me chivalry's not dead if he had managed to take me aside and talk to me like the mature adult he claims to be. I would not have been so cavalier towards his feelings in front of a group of his peers but I don't think Jesse is entirely human. He might be part Terminator like the liquid one in Terminator 2 Judgement Day." She takes another breath, ready to continue but Karofsky interrupts.

"It's okay if you call him the T-1000 behind his back, Berry. In fact it might make you feel better than anything ever."

Rachel sighs smoothing her hair back from around her face. "No thank you. I will not demean myself by calling Jesse unflattering names as true as they may be. And as tempting as it would be to ask you to destroy him physically not only would that most likely impede his ability to dance (in which case I would never be able to forgive myself for depriving the theater world of such talent) but it would open you up to reprisal from not only the male members of Vocal Adrenaline but most likely some of the females also. Their lead singer is really rather hefty and I fear that she would kill you both and devour your corpses. In either case, there seem to be like a thousand of them and they have the ability to multiply and make copies of themselves like Agent Smith from the Matrix." She pauses and looks confused as she takes a deep breath and shrugs. "Or they can in my nightmares anyway."

Azimo stares incredulously at Rachel before exchanging a glance with Karofsky. "It's not like they're Uruk-Hai, Berry."

Karofsky raises an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be too sure of that. I always thought Carmel High was Mordor from the way Berry claimed she snuck in and out of there." He looks down at Rachel who's studying her shoes practically curled into herself. A look crosses his face that erases so fast it almost wasn't there but what was there is hard to believe; tenderness, concern, and worry. "I don't care about Vocal Adrenaline or their impersonation of the Legion of Doom and frankly I think the lead toy soldier himself needs to be taken down a peg. It's offensive that St. James thinks he should be the end-all and be-all of your existence when you barely know the guy. What? Just because you sang a duet with him and he stopped tooling around at Carmel so he could tool around here, you're supposed to be the Scarlett to his Rhett. Bump that noise, Berry. Granted, Puckerman and Hudson aren't Sinatra or nothing-"

Azimo makes a cut-throat gesture as he interrupts. "Not even close."

Rachel pipes in and speaks. "And to be fair all you do have to do is sing with me. Or at me as the case may sometimes be."

Karofsky continues. "Whatever. The point is you wanted to get your freak on and prove you had guys all on your nuts and St. Douche gets pissed. Fuck him, Barry. It is your right as a hot American female to prove to anyone and everyone at anytime that you got people who want to get all up on that and what-not. And if St. James can't accept that then he sucks harder than I ever suspected was possible."

"And we've suspected he sucks harder than a Hoover vacuum for quite sometime."

Rachel sighs. "I just...it was inevitable that our relationship would come to an end regardless of if I did something or not. He's going to UCLA in the fall-"

Azimo looks at Karofsky. "Have you heard of it? It's in Los Angeles."

Rachel colors spectacularly. "I never should have told you he said that. Regardless, I'm just tired of being the one who gets dropped like yesterday's newspaper you know? It just sucks as you'd so eloquently put it."

Karofsky sits next hoists himself up on the edge of the stage next to Rachel. "Ok, first of all? St. James cutting you loose and acting like he has sand in his vagina is a blessing in disguise. The guy dresses like a crypt keeper, has the hair of a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, and is frankly in love with himself."

Azimo nods from where he's still standing in front of them. "Dude's definitely feeling himself a little too much."

Karosky pats her on the shoulder awkwardly. "You shut me down when I tried to tell you last week cause I guess you didn't think I meant it but I want you to think about what I'm about to say; honestly think about it Rachel."

Azimo seems uncharacteristaclly serious also. "What he's about to say goes double for me."

He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly before starting to talk. "None of this goes for Coronado because while strictly speaking I know he finds you hot and thinks you rock the PS3 like a vandal and we're a team and all but I can't speak for him cause I don't know the kid that well. I always thought you were a geek because of the way you dress and the way you talk and how your eyes get all Blair Witchy when someone mentions Broadway or a Tony-"

At this point Rachel looks around wildly before blushing brightly and ducking her head.

Azimo laughs and point. "Just like that."

Rachel crosses her arms and huffs. "Well this conversation is off to a spectacular start."

Karofsky shakes his head. "It's less of a conversation and more of a monologue (and I'm blaming you and SNL respectively for the fact that I know what a monologue is) but the point is, all that stuff's just surface. If you would've told me 2 months ago that you could shoot like a sharpshooter with a controller in your hand and actually knew what Call of Duty was much less beat all of the games, I would've thrown them into the nearest dumpster on sheer principal alone. But that's a part of who you are too. You're like this show called Psych-"

Azimo interrupts. "Ok dude i thought we were just gonna tell her that anybody that has beef with her has beef with us."

Rachel's eyes widen and Karofsky shoots Azimo a venomous look. "Dude you totally ruined the ending. But back to my point before spoiler alert here interrupted me. So the whole premise of Psych is that this guy named Shawn Spencer is this guy whose dad raised him to be super-cop or whatever. He trained him in police procedure, firearms training, deduction skills; the works. And to top it off, the guy has a photographic memory too. But Shawn doesn't want to be a cop so as soon as he graduates high school he leaves Santa Barbara to go walk the earth like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, which, F.Y.I we're making you watch one day. So he comes back 10 years later and starts noticing stuff from clips on the news and calls in details to the police. So they're like 'what the hell, man?' and they don't believe he can like read guilt and stuff from interviews so they're about to lock him up and he tells them he's a psychic."

Rachel's eyebrows scrunching up and while half of Jacob's brain is drooling over the fact that once this is over, he was going to break the juiciest story since Babygate the other half of him noticed how utterly adorable Rachel looked when she made that face. "So you're saying you think I'm psychic?"

Karofsky kinda gives her a 'wtf?' look and shakes his head. "No but close. You're Shawn Spencer. Shawn Spencer's this annoyingly dressed compared to his peers, loud-mouthed, hyper chatterbox. He's obsessed with 80's movies and Judd Nelson and everyone around him is kinda disdainful of him while simultaneously amazed by the things he does with his gift. But the whole point of the show is to show how Shawn goes from this irresponsible brat and becomes part of the team along with the SBPD and his best friend. His whole life he was destined to be a cop and that's where he winds up. And even when people look at him like he's crazier than Christian Bale, he changes their lives and is generally this like force of nature. That's you. You changed my life by being this force and even when I tried to stop you, you like snuck in and made yourself apart of me. And for the life of me, I don't see how no one else knows how awesome you are. You play video games like you were born with a Sega in your hand, you cook cheeseburgers that came from the rib of god (and for the record I still don't understand that whole vegan thing you got going on when you cool like you could make Emeril Lugosi your bitch, but whatev), you scared the crap out of my dad when you did that scene from Fight Club as Brad Pitt and acted like he was Edward Norton when he got that chemical burn-"

Azimo chimes in eyebrow raised. "Really? Tell me you got it on tape."

Karofsky bumps fists with him. "You know I do. And you're as sweet as you're awesome. You won't eat real food because of all the baby animals or whatever, I actually saw you slip a spider outside when most people would kill the bastards without thought, and even though my sister's a little monster of epic proportions she loves you and you can actually make her act like a human being instead of the spawn of Satan she really is. And to top all of that off, you think Tupac is one of the greatest things you ever heard."

Rachel raises her hand as if she's in class. "I would like to state that I had no idea someone could be so soulful and get their point across while still being so mainstreamed and generally loved and adored. I am offended that he was assassinated at the highlight of his career because not only was the world deprived of his talent but I was deprived of the chance to sing a duet with him or at least do background vocals for one of his diss tracks I think you called them. When that Jay-Z and Nas conflict was going on he could have popped in and waxed them with their own beat Hit 'Em Up style."

Azimo points. "See that right there. That's why you rock. No one would ever expect something like that to come out of your mouth."

Karofsky continues. "The point is I might actually past the pre-sat's this year because of you and you help me study and watch my back in Call of Duty making me look good on the CoD server when I've, we've done and said unspeakable things to you. And I've seen those jujitsu and taekwondo trophies in your house so I know you could've kicked my ass from here to Cleavland and still had time to go to your dance classes after school. If you had made an example out of Quinn when she was being Queen Bitch of Bitch Mountain, none of the Cheerios would've touched you again. And the only reason you didn't is because you stuck to your principles of non-violence unless necessary and took it like a champ. That's guts Berry and alot of the people I used to call friends don't have them. None of them could've stood being treated like you have by the entire school. So what if you're selfish, goal-obsessed, and kind of obnoxious sometimes? Alot of people are. And if dressing like a school girl grandma makes you happy then so what? It's no worse than what David Bowie wore on a good day and Bowie, weird as he dressed, also kicked ass. So I guess what I'm trying to say is since you've been such a good friend to me and that's after all I've ever done to you, than the least I can do is treat you like the friend you deserve to have. So from here on out? Your problems become my problems and your worries are my worries. Any of the Cheerios give you problems? I know a couple of stoner girls that'll kick their ass for 10 bucks a pop. Any guy throws a slushie in your face from here on out? I'll kick them square in the nuts so hard their babies will be born afraid of going to 7-11. So when St. Jackass decides to go back to Vocal Adrenaline I'll wait until you stomp his ass vocally and then I'll go kick his ass and the rest of Vocal Adrenaline's ass if you want me to."

Rachel chimes in, voice carrying the tears that had been building in her eyes from the latest round of Karofsky's speech. "You really think he's going back to Vocal Adrenaline?"

Azimo frowns and looks pitying for a moment before he simply looks pissed. "The guy calls himself 'The Showstopper' Rachel. Do you really think he's going to give up being crowned King Douche of The Universe for the 4th time in a row? Especially since his Licence to Kill And Try To Get In Your Pants has been revoked."

Rachel wipes at her face. "When you put it like that, although I wish you wouldn't, I can see where you'd begin to think he's going to pull a double fake in the last hours before Regionals." She frowns contemplative. "I imagine Jesse a little more professional than to pull such a stunt but I don't think its a matter of professionalism to him. His ego hounds him as mine does me so it would be more a matter of a perfect record than anything else."

Karofsky shrugs. "Well when he does go back to lead the robot brigade in their final quest of searching for actual human emotion, let me know how bad it gets and I'll act accordingly. You're like a step-sister I never wanted but learned to get along with through wacky antics and bonding over unexpected hobbies. I gotta defend you against punk exes; it's like my job."

Rachel's eyes fill with tears and she's suddenly doing her best Bambi impression. "You think of me like a sister?" She launches herself into his arms and stars to cry and make strange gasping noises from where her face is buried into his chest. Karofsky looks down at her in panic at Azimo who simply smirks and watches as Berry cries herself out. Soon enough she disentangles herself from Karofsky and beams up at him from where she hopped off the stage. "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me and I always wanted a brother who I could beat up and hook up with girls. I know a lovely girl named Sally who's a dancer and you'll just adore her. In fact I can call her and you can ask her on a date right now."

She practically skips over to where her bag is and Karofsky heads over in panic. "Berry, I said step-sister. No beating me up and no setting me up on dates with chicks." Rachel stops rummaging in her bag and makes a squinty face that seems to preclude every crying session she's ever had. Karofsky turns to Azimo. "Say something man before we end up on a double date with Berry playing cruise director."

Azimo steps forward and clears his throat dramatically. "Rachel, I'm a man. A man like any other with dreams and emotions. And that's why I'll never put a foreign object up my ass."

There's an explosion of noise; half of it is Azimo and Karofsky cracking up while Rachel starts saying something about the prostate and stimulation. Azimo quickly covers her mouth, looking horrified while Karofsky pounds his free fist as he chuckles. "Classic Poitier."

Rachel smacks away Azimo's hand and turns to Karofsky. "I refuse to believe that a man as refined and dignified as Sidney Poitier could ever use such foul language like that no matter what film he appears in."

Azimo winks at Dave over her head. "The quote's not word for word but it was actually a made for tv movie with Sally Struthers from back in the 90's. He even went to visit Barbra Streisand while he was filming and they caught it on tape."

Rachel looks mollified. "Really? Was she nice?"

Azimo waves his hand in a see-sawing motion. "She was kinda bitchy but I think Sidney understood she was having a bad day. They worked out their differences. He even had a cute little nickname for her that people still call her to this day. I think the Japanese called her Mecha Streisand first and Sidney just picked up the honored nickname. We'll watch it today."

Rachel frowns. "You guys don't have football practice?"

Azimo shrugs. "Yeah but Tanaka's got his hands full with keeping Ms. Pillsbury from riding Schuester like a rodeo show so we can skip and catch the consequences but we're not gonna. You're going to ditch school with us today and then we'll come back for practice."

Rachel shakes her head. "I'm not ditching and putting a mark on my permanent record."

Azimo looks at Rachel like he was a scientist and she was a new specimen that he'd never seen before. "Ditching doesn't get on your permanent record. And plus... well I didn't want to mention this but the A-team is calling us out. They want a showdown at 3:00 and we need to get in as much practice on Nazi Zombies as we can because I refuse to be called out like a pansy by some guy named after Mr. T." He claps a hand on her shoulder. "And you should know the one named Murdoch called you a crap shooting cock fag."

Rachel looks deeply offended. "A crap shooter? A crap shooter! How reprehensible and uncouth and ignorant; terribly rude and untrue to boot. And then to add further insult to injury by calling me a 'cock fag'. This is unbelievable!"

Karofsky nods and snaps his fingers "That's why we need you to man up and skip so we can school these punks. Besides what are Catman, Space Ace or The Demon without their fearless leader." He lays his hand on her shoulder. "Help us Star Child; you're our only hope."

She seems to contemplate her shoes before she smiles and laughs. "What kind of leader would I be if I said no to a plea as passionate as that? I suppose I could use an extra day's start to Spring Break." She picks up her bag before Karofsky grabs it from her and throws it over his shoulder. "You better show me this made for tv movie though and this supposed Barbara tape. Because while I believe you both are my superior in many ways, I refuse to believe you've seen a shred of Barbara footage that I myself have not seen."

Azimo rubs his neck and looks shifty as they walk out of the choir room, the athletes flanking the girl he loved on both sides. "See about that..."

Jacob can no longer hear the words they're saying and he can no longer feel his previous excitement over posting the encounter on his blog. Because while Jacob Ben Israel has always suspected Rachel Berry was like a phoenix and would eventually rise out of the ashes of her classmates' disdain, he can't help but wish it wouldn't have happened the way its going to.

AN2: Azimo's 'I'm a man' line is from the first season episode of South Park dedicated to ripping almost entirely on Babs. Here's the prompt that inspired me, though I wouldn't call it a fill persay:

The gleeks find out that Rachel is an avid gamer, but not "cutsey" games as they have assumed. Instead they find out she's a hardcore FPS/Grand Theft Auto/Gears of War/WoW gamer (perhaps part of a nationally ranked guild/team).

Confusion/confrontation ensues.

Please review and if enough people like it; I'll show more scenes from their friendship + OC!Coronado 


	2. The Ballad of Joshua Moore

AN: So in my opinion, there are two definitions of crack!fic; number one is where the author has (hypothetically speaking, of course) been smoking crack and writes something under the influence of said illegal substance. The second definition is a fic where most of the central characters appear to have been smoking crack off screen. This chapter's definitely the latter. Oh and in my mind, although Finn's the quarterback, he's not the football or basketball team captain

Title: Thanks For (Not Throwing Beverages In My Face Anymore) Being There

Chapter 2 Summary: Promises are kept, Coronado joins in on the fun, and slushie attacks are analyzed on charts. Warnings: Kurt bashing, constant insinuations that Jesse's a robot of some kind, inception, and Oscar worthy acting Otherwise? S*** gets real!

At 7:45, Jacob posted the video he took at 7:20 that morning on his blog. Too bad the secret was already out.

Maybe Jacob Gossip Girl Ben Israel would've gotten to break the story of the Kiss Army's unexpected team-up if freshmen Joshua Moore hadn't thrown a slushie in Rachel Berry's face as soon as she entered the main public hallway that morning. But to be fair to young Joshua, he was in desperate need of a rise on the ladder of McKinley High's social landscape. His former girlfriend (freshman Cheerio Faye Dawson) had spread around that he was a bad kisser. Again, in his defence, she had been his first kiss but he wasn't going to tell her that. Everyone who was anyone knew that with Santana Lopez slipping farther and farther into the land of the geeks every day that went by, it would only be a matter of time when someone would step up and become the new Head Bitch of the Cheerio squad and though she was young, Faye Dawson had the Supreme Power of Bitchiness in spades.

Simply put, if there was a mega-bitchy!Sith Order, she would have been a small Count Dooku using her twin lightsabers of backhanded compliments and scathing insults to slice everyone's shit up.

So it was understandable that someone like Joshua (who was second string safety on a football team as bad as McKinley's; honestly you couldn't get farther down the jock totem pole without being Kurt Hummel) would do whatever they could to hold onto someone like Faye Dawson and the eventual power she would wield in her small (yet chapped from doling out bitch-slaps like they were candy and it was Halloween year round) hands. And so he did what anyone who wanted to be more popular in McKinley High did. (Well, besides throwing Hummel in a dumpster.)

He threw a slushie in a geek's face in a crowded hallway.

Now the rise of your popularity and how much you directly get to tangibly experience that rise depends entirely on who you decide to slushy, how crowded the hallways were, and what time of day it was. If you did it too late in the day other possible slushie incidents could have been cooler and more devastating. The only thing you would accomplish in that case is to be seen as a copycat or a wannabe, which Joshua Moore couldn't afford to be seen as in any way shape or form. If you did it in the middle of the day, you risked being seen by a teacher who was having a bad day and unlike any other day, decides to drag you to the Principal's office. If you did it too early in the morning, you run the risk of not only being seen as uncool for getting to school so early but of also your attack only being witnessed by geeks who came to school early on a regular basis. If you did it too late in the morning you ran the risk of accidentally slushying someone seen as cool or (god help us all) a Cheerio. No.

A man in the position of Joshua Moore could only slushie someone at a certain time and that time had to be at least five minutes before the first warning bell.

The crowded hallways were, of course, a tool for the spreading of the gossip about your awesomeness as soon as possible. Too crowded and you didn't get to walk away all cool and swaggery as the chump you just slushied ran off crying without people being in the way of your Walk of Cool. Not crowded enough and he wouldn't be able to reap the benefits of being invited to sit with the upper-echelon of Jock Nation by lunchtime the same day. The same day lunchtime invite was crucial to the slight bump of popularity one might receive by doing the perfect Slushy-By (Joshua decides to coin the witty phrase at the lunch table today; things could only go up from there if Azimo or {Stars Above!} Karofsky decided to start saying it) because an even bigger spike would be gained once everyone saw who you were sitting with and by afternoon, if everything went according to plan?

He'd be on his way to being the next Finn Hudson by fall next year. Only, you know, with brains and actual knowledge of how the reproductive system works.

Once you decided when and what exposure you needed, you had to pick a target. Jacob Ben Israel was usually good for a good slushie or two every week but a lot of the people in the school depended on Jacob's blog for gossip and entertainment during the day. So if he was too busy cleaning a slushie you threw at him out of his greasy Jew-Fro to blog about something juicy that someone important might just want to know, you could pretty much guarantee all of the hard work and effort you put into creating the best atmosphere for The Perfect (Slushy) Storm was going down the drain ASAP.

Band and AV geeks were useful too but if you slushied a band geek too close to game day a jock with sudden and inexplicable school spirit might take offense. AV geeks were frequently used by the Cheerios to document their practices and whatever nonsense they demanded the poor bastards get on tape. So if a Cheerio had decided a certain geek was supposed to be taking glamour shots of her before school started or what have you and they were too busy being mocked for something you did to follow through with it, there would be almost instant hell to pay. Vicious gossip about you would begin to make the rounds by 1st period and you'd be socially dead in the water for many months to come all because you unknowingly pricked some chick's ego.

The only truly safe (slushy) haven was Rachel Berry and what made it even sweeter was that, with the other conditions in place of course, slushying her would cause his popularity to rocket to never seen before heights. All of the Cheerios hated Rachel on conventional hot-girl principal alone and when you added in the fact that their leader's fall from grace directly coincided with her and Finn Hudson joining the geek squad, almost every Cheerio would practically spread their legs for a chance to see him do it again and again as often as possible. The jocks hated her not only because she was annoying but because she had some inexplicable freaky hypnotist power that she obviously used on both Hudson and Puckerman to get them to join in on her and Schuester's resurrection of homo explosion, Homo Brigade 2- The Sequel. And even though he honestly didn't hate Rachel Berry (he rarely thought of her except for when she was pushing her musical agenda on man, woman and child) he knew enough to know that on this day, she would be his ticket to instant, irrefutable, and undeniable popularity. Faye would fall all over herself to be aligned with the guy who was the new up and comer and she'd have to retract what she said about his kissing to do it. As he saw Berry turn the corner, he thought to himself that things couldn't get any sweeter. Maybe the halls were a little more crowded than he'd have preferred but the greatest thing about slushying Rachel Berry was that if it didn't work? He could simply do it again and again until it did.

And on almost any other day he'd have been right.

Joshua Moore had spent the days since 'kissgate' as Jacob Ben Israel (who would be getting a slushie to the face the moment it was feasible, the unimaginative troll) had dubbed it studying in his mind and on chart the effects the past few months slushying had on the popularity scene and memorizing any variables so that his attack would be just perfect. He had heard about the early morning break up so Jesse St. James need not be considered (though maybe it was best if he didn't do it in front of the boy; he's heard he has laser beams for eyes when he gets pissed and ex-girlfriend or not, St. James had to care about Berry to put up with all of her crazy) and if he had two slushies with him, none of the other geeks would be willing to step in. Though it was unlikely they would anyway because in all of his studies, he's noticed that when one of the other geeks got slushied near-by geeks would rush them to the bathroom but Berry usually walked the long walk to her locker and the bathroom by herself. Maybe he'd get to hit her with both; the second slushie obviously being delivered as soon as she leaves the bathroom.

While the work that Joshua Moore did on his slushie analysis breakdown was truly impressive, it perhaps would have behooved him to study the reactions of the people he was so desperate to impress. Because for the past 2 months, three members of Jock Island had started to find themselves noticing that each and every slushy attack on Rachel Berry got less and less epic and/or hilarious as time went by. If Joshua had made a chart about that, the graph line would have plunged straight into the ground the moment Dave Karofsky looked down into Rachel Berry's face, put his hand on her shoulder, and told her with all due sincerity that she was their only hope. Because the truth was that although it had gaming had started as the entire basis of their friendship, the four of them liked to spend time with each other outside of the virtual world and Dave Karofsky knew that much like himself, Azimo was a little in love with the person Rachel Berry turned out to be.

And if someone loves someone else and that love was truly genuine, no matter how small or platonic the amount, they'd defend them from any perceivable threat the best way they knew how. And say what you want about any changes Rachel Berry's influence may have inflicted on Azimo and Karofsky's personalities but their default mode was 'Neanderthal violence' when someone they liked was in trouble.

The above writing simply boils down to one thing and one thing only: despite all of his research and all of his planning, Joshua Moore unwittingly picked the worst time, person, and place to use as his scheme to climb a ladder he would from this day forward no longer be allowed to step foot on. Because that morning, five minutes before the first warning bell rang, Joshua Moore's message to the masses became David Karofsky's message to the masses and ultimately, the message of 3/4ths of The Kiss (Gaming) Band. And fortunately for the rest of McKinley High (but unfortunately for young Joshua), Dave Karofsky knows how to send a message. It is because of this that no one else would have to go through what that poor bastard of a freshmen was about to go through that spring morning.

Part 2

Dave Karofsky honestly couldn't be any happier. Azimo had split to raid the media room for some headsets and Coronado was still scheduled to meet them at the front doors at 8:00. He's following a good eight feet behind Berry waiting impatiently for her to force her way through the crowds so he could follow in her wake. The plan was for her to grab her purse from her locker, they swing by homeroom to check-in, and then they all bounce to Berry's house to kick off an epic week of some good old-fashioned zombie/Nazi/hooker/duck virtual killing.

Plans had a funny way of going off the rails though. The build-up would all seem so blurry when he stops to think about it later. One moment he was looking behind him to exchange thumbs-up with Azimo, who had obviously completed his mission judging by the bulgy looking knapsack he had thrown over his shoulders. The next moment he's turning back around just to see Berry take a slushie to the face from some no-name freshmen that Azimo's always bitching about following him around cracking stupid jokes.

"Oh." He takes one look at Berry covered in cherry slushie from where he's been lagging back and looks around for reactions only to find the rest of the hall laughing and pointing. For a moment, all he can see is the pooling of tears in her eyes before a mask of indifference drops over her face and she moves to leave and go to her locker for a change of clothes. There was a second where he almost wimped out and broke his promise, one second where he almost decided to walk away from Berry and The Kiss (Gaming) Band, one second where everything that anyone has ever said about him being an asshole, a loser, and a waste of space would have been proven right if the next words out of his mouth hadn't been:

"Hold this for me Berry and stay right there." He whips off his letterman jacket meaning to drop it at her feet as he sauntered past her and hope to god she'd pick it up off the ground but her reflexes meant that by the time he has the guy slammed against a locker, she has his letterman jacket held gingerly by the fingers and was obviously taking care not to let slushie drip onto it. His heart aches at the sight of her treating something so important to him like it was equally important to her and it was in that moment that he knew no matter what happened with the Kiss (Gaming) Band, he would never let another person cause any harm to Rachel Barbara Berry as long as they both attended McKinley High School.

The kid looks terrified and for one moment he feels bad about the attention he's going to bring down on his tiny freshmen-sized head. But only for a moment; it could've been anybody who slushied Berry the day he made his promise and he would've felt as equally bad for them (especially if they were one of his hockey teammates) but it wouldn't have stopped him from doing to them exactly what he was about to do to his kid. He passes her the second 32 oz slushie in the kids' hands and she grabs it from him automatically.

Even though he's staring creepily into the kid's eyes, he can feel the gazes of all the people in the hall on him and Rachel's warmth at his back. She touches his arm gingerly and whispers, "Dave, what are you doing?"

He makes his voice loud enough to be heard in the hallway. "I'm keeping my promise. I'm going to show him and all of these people exactly what happens when they mess with one of my teammates-" Here he pauses because even if Azimo joined the hockey team tomorrow he wouldn't refer to him as his teammate; Azimo was his friend first and foremost. At the realisation that exchanging the name Berry for the name Azimo made no difference to the fact of that sentence, his eyes become even more laser-like and he could feel the chump in his hands start to shake. "Correction; one of my friends. But first..." He clears his throat and does his best Ron Burgundy impression. "Kiss Band; assemble!"

He can hear Berry muttering underneath her breath. "I'm only dreaming. I'm only dreaming." She pauses her mumbling and he imagines her looking around at the shifting and curious crowd around her. She immediately starts mumbling a bit more hysterically. "It's just inception. It's just inception."

He takes his eyes away from the kid (but not his hands) to survey either side of the crowd. From the left, shoving his way through the crowd like a titan, comes Azimo who looks as determined as he feels. From the right comes McKinley High's starting shooting guard, standing a good head and a half above most of the crowd at 6'5, Joseph Coronado. He inwardly breathes a sigh of relief because he honestly didn't know if Coronado would come if he called.

Coronado's a (lot) little different than the other jocks in the school. As shooting guard, he makes the majority of the baskets in the games McKinley plays which meant that he was not only the best basketball player at McKinley (semantics and stats aside) but the only one likely to actually get a scholarship to a good NCAA college. That, in turn, made him one of the most popular boys in school. Considering how attractive he was, even though he did look like he could be ten years older than all of them when he didn't shave, he could have been the Finn Hudson of the school (Fabray had actually hit on him pretty crucial freshmen year) minus the dopiness and casual cruelty but instead Coronado had chosen a life on the sidelines. The one and only time Coronado had slushied a geek, when he saw the way the little munchkin looked like he was about to cry, he had immediately apologized and allowed the kid a free sucker-punch. While the kid didn't take the shot after that, any other person besides Coronado would've been a social pariah no matter how good he was on the basketball court but there was just something about him. The way he walked, the way he looked at a person, the way he smiled. The moment he spoke, which he rarely did, and reminded you of how deep and manly his voice was you forgot the fact that this guy was the complete opposite of almost everything that made people like him and Azimo popular. And if he didn't speak at all?

The bold white C on his letterman's jacket did his talking for him.

Just like the one on Azimo's coat spoke for him.

Just like the C on the coat draped on Rachel Berry's fingers spoke for him.

The murmurs in the crowd get a little louder and he knows what a powerful image Azimo and Coronado flanking him makes. As far as anyone else besides the four of them knew, Coronado couldn't stand either him or Azimo on principal alone. And while it wasn't exactly the Cold War when they first teamed up, he knows that until he let Coronado in a little just so he could understand what was inside his head even the tiniest bit, Coronado didn't like either of them and he knows (deep in his heart of hearts) the only reason he had originally stayed with the group was because of Berry. But none of that matters because the second he's inside the little circle they've cleared out, he speaks. "Catman reporting for duty."

Azimo chimes in. "Space Ace."

Karofsky finishes up the team introduction they use every time they enter a CoD server. "The Demon. And our fearless leader..."

All three of them look at Rachel and even though she's covered in rapidly drying slushie and is obviously embarrassed about being here at this moment, she still raises her head with pride as she says, "Starchild. What's this about David? You know I don't need you to defend me from attacks on my person."

He shakes his head and motions at Coronado and Azimo. And maybe he just knew or maybe Azimo had debriefed Coronado by text about what went down in the choir room but in either case, Coronado and Azimo both kick the nameless kid's legs apart so his stance is wide and they hold it with their ankles curled in on his. He nods at them as he steps back and gestures to Rachel. "I figure since he threw a slushie in your face and he just so happened to have an extra one, you could return the favor."

The crowd gasps and starts to rumble a little higher. Rachel clutches the drink in her hand but shakes her head in resolution. "No. Not only would his lettermen jacket obviously be expensive to dry-clean but I refuse to throw a drink in someone's face on principal alone. It's embarrassing and degrading and not to mention the weakest of attacks I could inflict at any given moment on someone." Her face hardens and she looks an awful lot like when they ran out of ammo and were surrounded by zombies right before she ran in and started knifing them with her rifle. "But since he so nicely paid for it, I am going to drink it and think about the fact that the money he spent to humiliate me will instead go towards quenching my thirst." She looks at the kid with a barely noticeable curl to her upper lip as she takes a drink. "Mhhhm. Grape."

Karofsky bows his head at her in a parody of acknowledging the awe she fills him with on a daily basis. "Berry, you're so full of mercy it kind of makes me sick with pride and disgust at the same time." He turns back to the kid and raises his voice once more. "I however am not. Not even ten minutes ago I promised Rachel Berry that from this day forward, her problems were my problems and her worries were my worries. In that spirit, I told her that every girl that drew pornos of her on the bathroom stalls and incessantly calls her out of her name will very much have a problem when I call in a few of my cousin's friends from Jane Addams Academy to handle the situation satisfactorily for a nice sum of money." There's uneasy movement throughout the female members of the crowd; they all knew exactly what those Jane Addam's girls got up to. "I also promised her that any guy who threw a slushie in her face would get to play a little game I like to call Roe Sham Bo. But I go first, last, and only."

He speaks above the roar of the crowd and idly notices how well Azimo and Coronado hold onto the squirming frosh. "This goes for everyone; I don't care if you're boy, girl, or Hummel." He can just faintly hear an indignant gasp but continues on. "I don't care which one of our teams you're on; I don't care if you play soccer, baseball, hackysack or chess. I want you to tell everyone you can as fair warning; don't start any problems and there won't be any problems. From here on out if you have a problem with Rachel Berry you can either ignore her, try to work it out like you're on an episode of Dr. Phil, or you can try me. And if you try me, you try all three of us." At this point he makes his voice sound as dead as possible. "And I can guarantee all of you; that is the last thing you want to do."

He starts to back up and the kid starts freaking out hardcore. "You're not going to kick me in the junk are you? I didn't know. I swear!"

Coronado speaks and Karofsky thinks that the sadness and resignation in his voice brings home to this crowd more than anything how far even someone like Coronado would go to defend Rachel Berry; how far he'd go to make a point that should have been made a while ago. "Promises have to be kept and someone has to be the object lesson Joshua. Try and take it like a man." Coronado positions himself so that he's able to hold onto the kid's struggling upper body with one hand and cover his mouth (effectively muffling his yells of protest) with the other; Azimo mimics his position on the other side of the kid and he goes back as far as he can until he's pressed to the lockers on the other side of the hall.

Rachel, who's been looking more and more sick since the kid started screaming, speaks right as he was about to start his momentum. "Wait!" The kid looks so grateful that its almost sad when she only says, "At least take off your boot first." The crowd goes even louder as he simply nods at her (and looks around the crowd quickly to see if there are any cellphones out but there aren't; probably too shocked by what was going on to try and film a damn thing) before he takes off his Timberland and runs straight forward so he can ram his socked foot right into the kid's nuts as hard as he can. The boy's face goes green and he lands face down on the ground as Coronado and Azimo let him go, only to proceed to throw up and start brokenly sobbing like a baby. The sound of the frosh crying is the only sound in the hallway for about a minute until Schuester's voice could be heard from the far side of the hall. "What's going on here! Let me through."

And even though Rachel looks like she's about to cry and/or throw up too, she takes the top off the lid and starts chugging it down even as she shoves his jacket at him. And its probably the future frat boy in him but when he starts to move forward as he puts on his jacket and makes a cirle around Rachel with Coronado and Azimo completing it, he automatically puts the boy out of his mind and starts chanting chug along with them. All three of their voices hold a note of utter sickness and Rachel's fingers are so tightly grasped around the cup she's holding that the squeak of plastic is fierce, but they act like they have no idea that some kid (his mind whispers to him: Joshua; his name is Joshua) is curled in the fetal position behind them in what has to be the worst pain of his life and their voices get louder the longer Rachel drinks.

"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"

"Oh my God!"

Rachel spikes her cup on the ground and though there's a hysterical sound underneath it, she mostly sounds smug as her voice over-powers Schue's sound of panic."Suck on that jocko homos! As in the Devo song; not as in the slur for homosexuals though. Because I have two gay dads and would never use such offensive language."

Schue breaks into their circle and they all turn to him. "What's going on here?"

Rachel smiles blindingly up at the Spanish teacher. "Well these young gentlemen surprised me with a slushie and dared me to drink it as fast as I can. Of course, I, as a stunning young ingenue..." Here she pauses and tosses her slushie matted hair over her shoulder. "cannot conceivably turn down a challenge no matter who issues it. If I'm to make it on Broadway..." She scans the crowd and he starts to think that maybe she's a better actor than he's ever suspected because when her eyes land on the kid (his name is Joshua; you just kicked the poor loser in the junk so the least you could do is think of him by his name) her eyes keep going but jump back to his prone figure and she obviously stiffens up. "Oh my god. What happened to him? I don't mean to use such language but why the heck is he on the floor curled into the fetal position surrounded by vomit? Does anyone know what happened? Did anyone see anything?"

And though she sounds genuinely concerned, there's a cold note in her voice. He watches as she stares at the crowd on either side of them, daring any of them to dime the four of them out. He feels as if someone's thrown cold water on him because if she's that good of an actress, how could he know if she was lying or not when she told him that his deepest, darkest secret was safe with her? But as he looks at her he notices her lips tremble slightly and he can remember her lips doing the same thing when she acted like Tyler Durden and scared the beejezus out of his father. And for the life of him, he can't remember her lip trembling when she told him she'd never tell anyone the secret thing he told her. It's this epiphany that allows his voice to be completely smooth when he chimes in. "Jesus Christ; you turn your back on the little bastards for a minute and next thing you know they're throwing up all over the place. Freshmen." He looks at Coronado and Azimo. "He one of your guys?"

Azimo frowns and the color slowly starts to return to his skin, replacing the grey pall that covered it just moments ago. "I think he's one of my second stringers; Moorehouse or something like that." He struts over to the kid (Joshua) and leans into his face. "What happened?" And he thinks the freezing tone in Azimo's voice is even more pronounced than Rachel's and he's both proud and sick at the fact that the coldness will be construed by Schue as protectiveness over his obviously hurt teammate but everyone else will know exactly why he sounds like that.

The kid- Joshua's face is pale and waxlike as he surveys the five of them. "I...nothing. I fell."

Schue frowns. "Why are you clutching your crotch?"

Rachel makes a scandalized gasp. "Mr. Schue! You can't go around asking people why they touch themselves. That is a private and personal matter and I for one will not stand around while you interrogate the poor boy." She looks at him and he notices how his boot is in her hand and has been since she started chugging the slushie. "Karofsky, I'm keeping your boot like we agreed until you pay me my money. I expect to be paid promptly by the end of the day."

Coronado speaks slowly. "I've gotta swing by my locker anyway Berry. Come with me and I'll pay you and he can pay me later; the idea of Karofsky walking around shoeless all day makes me nauseous."

Act like you hate him, he thinks to himself, act like you hate them both. He sneers. "Don't do me any favors, Coronado. Just make sure she gives me my boot back."

Schuester looks stunned. "You're actually going to keep his boot until you get paid?"

Rachel frowns. "Why of course! A bet made is like a promise; you never back out and you don't pretend you didn't make it. You do what you have to do and when its over, if you kept your word, then that's all that really matters." She looks at them one by one, making direct eye contact with each of them. "Right?"

Karofsky laughs through his dry throat. "As much as I'd hate to agree with you about anything Berry, you are absolutely right. When you make a promise you keep it." He looks down at Joshua and hopes he understands that this was just business; the act of kicking ass and taking names was a harsh business but it was still only business in the end. He cares very little for what pain Joshua as a person is going through; any man curled on the floor because of a kick he gave them to the nuts would make him feel like this. And if Joshua didn't know any better before? He knows now. "No matter what."

She starts to walk away (the crowd parts effortlessly for her in what, he'd bet his non-existent life savings, has to be the first time that's ever happened in her high school career) and even though he knows Coronado and her are trying to play off the fact that they've known each other for months and they really need to concentrate on that, he has one last piece of his message to deliver. "Berry?"

She turns around and looks at him in annoyance. "Yes?"

He smiles a vicious smile. "Next time I have to fulfill a promise? No matter what you say, no matter what you do I'm not taking off my boot again. And that's a promise." And he looks in her direction but he's also making fleeting eye contact with some of the most blatant offenders in the hallway. Some of them are teammates, some of them are guys he's liked and hung out with in the past, and some of them are hot chicks. But it doesn't matter; he means what he says.

Rachel frowns a little. "While I'm smart enough to understand such things, I would hope that others are as well." And then they're both gone around the corner so he turns to look at Azimo, anxious to wrap up this whole scene.

"Come on." He looks at Schue who seems to be thinking rapidly on something and while he knows that its the scene in the hall he's thinking on, he hopes to god that all the random variables (Coronado, Rachel being herself in the face of his suspicion, their very improbable but not unlikely faux bet) keep him from connecting the dots. "We're gonna take the frosh to the nurse's office. See you in Spanish Schue." He walks in the other direction and some people look mad, some look bewildered, and others simply look like they don't know what they just saw.

But each and everyone of them look scared and that was enough for now. Idily, he mentally and permanently turns the switch in his brain from Berry to Rachel. Because if you can't call a person by their first name when you just kicked someone square in the nuts for them, that's kind of pathetic.

AN2: Man that was a beast. What do you think of Coronado? So let me know what you like , what you don't like, what you'd like to see. There will be gaming soon enough but first I have to get them out of the school. Ooh, timeline.

7:20 - Exact time Jesse, Finn, and Puck had their diva moment.

7:24 - Rachel just finished singing Total Eclipse of The Heart; the band or whoever leaves (unless it was one of those mental songs like Artie's safety dance one; whatev...Inception!)

7:26 - Azimo and Karofsky enter the scene; cue awesomeness

7:33 - Their conversation over, all three leave the choir room. Azimo heads off to raid for headsets and Rachel and Karofsky head off to her locker, Karofsky following behind

7:40 - Five minutes before the first warning bell, Joshua Moore slushies Rachel; shit goes nuts

7:45 - Rachel's in the bathroom cleaning herself up, Coronado is talking to her as he manfully keeps his eyes averted, Azimo and Karofsky have dropped Joshua off in the nurse's office and are en route to an undisclosed as of yet location, Schue's trying to play Sherlock holmes, half the school has been terrifed and/or aroused, New Directions minus Robot Boy are in a tizzy, and finally after some editing, Jacob posts his juicy exclusive video to his blog


	3. When Rachel Met Joseph

AN:I don't know who gave the first slushie facial but I'd lay damn good money on it being Puck and the recipeint being Rachel. Oh and in my mind, Coronado and Rachel met right after the events in Ballad and the Kiss (Gaming) Band formed two weeks after Sectionals.

Title: Thanks For (Not Throwing Beverages In My Face Anymore) Being There

Joseph Coronado had spent the last two years of his high school career being subconsciously rewarded and praised for not being a complete and total asshole before he spoke to Rachel Berry for the second time in his life.

Oh, he knows most of his peers and teachers wouldn't phrase it like that but Coronado's the kind of guy that knows his own weaknesses and strengths. Overall, there was nothing particularly special about him as far as anyone had known when he first came to McKinley High. He wasn't a leader but he wasn't a follower either. Maybe his dusky skin, hazel-green eyes, and exotic facial features (exotic for Ohio anyway) made him look good to some of the girls but most of them threw themselves at boys that had more...boisterous natures than he possessed. He didn't play football so most of the first semester of his freshmen year had been spent being ignored by the people who within the next two years would be so desperate for a word of praise from him. When he tried out for the basketball team, he still became just another (admittedly damn good, according to Coach Tanaka anyway) freshmen on a struggling team.

He probably would have spent the rest of his high school career like that if it hadn't been for Noah Puckerman. Puckerman had come into the school, and like many freshmen, spent his time not concentrating on his schooling but trying to make a name for himself. And where many before have failed, he had succeeded beyond anything thought possible. It was Puckerman that came up with the 'slushie facials' and 'dumpster dives' in the fall of Coronado's sophmore year and it had been Puckerman that has placed the one and only slushie he's ever thrown in someone's face into his hands.

To this very day he doesn't know why he did it but when he tries to remember, he thinks half of him just wanted to get the damn thing over with and the other half wanted to see if it was as hilarious as everyone claimed. A lot of his teammates had been watching as he had quickly disposed of the drink into some AV guy's face. The look of utter embarrassment and devastation that crossed his features had immediately made him take the kid to the bathroom and clean him up. Once there, he had offered the kid a sucker-punch just to make up for what he had done. Little did he know that his not-so-selfless act would be the first of Jacob Ben Israel's many breaking stories. By the time he had gotten a change of clothes for the kid and thoroughly rinsed his shirt out to keep it from being stained with slushie, the video had already gone viral.

It had been at lunch that day when he, quite accidentally, cemented what would become the persona McKinley High would foster onto him: Joseph Alejandro Coronado, The Nice Jock. He had been sitting at his usual table reading the classifieds so he could find a cheap dirt bike for his cousin's birthday. Most of his thoughts had been concentrated on going online to Craig's List to see what they might have and the rest of them had been on what was under Theresa Pepperman's skirts so he hadn't been completely focused on the conversation that happened but it had gone something like this:

The table had gotten quiet all of a sudden (unknowingly to him, spreading the sudden quiet to other near-by tables) when he heard Puckerman speak to him. "Coronado, what was that earlier?"

His voice was distant as he marked a possible ad to respond to with his felt tip marker. "What was what?"

Puckerman's voice raises, causing even more people to look towards them. "What was with you helping that nerd clean up after the awesome slushie attack? And offering him a free sucker punch? What are you like..." Here he laughed. "gay for the geek?"

He was reading a blurb about a couch for $50 but when he heard hushed laughter, he answered even more absently than before. "No, I'm actually quite certain that I'm a heterosexual. I just don't think spending my mother's hard-earned money to buy an icy beverage only to throw it in some poor bastard's face is an 'epic prank' like you told me it would be. A prank's supposed to be funny; not something that makes you feel like a jackass. But I'll tell you what; if I ever again want to feel like a complete waste of space and make my parents seem like they failed at instilling even the most basic instincts of kindness and decency into me, I'll give you a call."

He doesn't notice Puckerman's face harden or the cafeteria go completely silent. "Maybe I think you should try it again; my treat. And I don't know about you but when I offer to buy someone a drink, I don't like them to refuse." Puckerman leans down and quite suddenly rips his newspaper out of his hands. "And I don't like it when people don't even have the guts to look at me when I'm talking to them."

Anyone could have told him that was a bad move. Every lunch period of Coronado's high-school career at that point had been spent either practicing his footwork or reading the newspaper for anything of interest. If you wanted to talk to him at lunchtime you made damn sure he had finished reading his paper to his satisfaction first or you'd be sent away and dismissed until he had. No one had ever actually taken it out of his hands before and quite suddenly he decides that Puckerman just made the biggest mistake of his little frosh life.

He slowly looks up and he doesn't know what's on his face but suddenly, Puckerman doesn't look like he wants to continue the conversation. Too bad for him. "Look freshmen, I don't know what Very Special Episode of Degrassi you came out of but I'd advise you to either go back in or keep your generic routine of "New Kid Wants To Fit In So He Unleashes Douchezilla Unto An Unsuspecting Populace" away from me. Frankly, stomping your colon through your nose will take more effort than I want to expend on some chump who's trying so hard to be seen as somebody that its actually a little pathetic so I'll let you make the choice on where we can go from here." He holds up both hands and gestures with each, voice going steadily louder as he speaks. "This can go one or two ways: one, I take you outside and shove all size eleven of my Lebron James' down your throat so hard you'll think you're literally choking to death on style and all of your frosh friends can come and watch me do it; or two, you never snatch something out of my hands again, feel free to continue your ridiculous reign of terror as long as it doesn't involve me in any way whatsoever, respect my decision to not join in with whatever idiocy your feeble brain can come up with, don't ever again speak to me like you've lost your damned mind, and stay far, far away from me unless you have the ability to handle a basketball."

He yawns, trying to convey his utter boredom with this conversation using body language and facial expressions even as his heart hammers in his chest because of the fact that he's never spoken so much in front of so many people who (and yes, he is just now noticing; so much for spatial awareness) are extremely interested in what he's saying. Well hell; if you had to be known as the person who made a scene in the cafeteria you might as well be known as the witty person who made a scene in the cafeteria. "So what's it gonna be; do I need to go get a sugar-free Red Bull from the vending machine and power up for the impending Stomp-o-Rama or do you give me back my newspaper so I can finish the next in a long line of riveting stories about Garfield and his unhealthy but completely understandable obsession with lasagna?"

And for the first and only time in his life, Noah Puckerman stutters even if its just the slightest bit. "Number t-two." He thrust the paper under his nose. "Here's your newspaper."

He smiles approvingly, pleased that the younger man made the choice that meant he could continue to eat his lunch instead of wasting the rest of his free period giving some kid a beat down. "That's a wise decision." As he smiles he notices that while the boy that's been standing next to Puckerman is obviously still growing into his body, one day he'd be tall enough to theoretically do some damage on the basketball court. "Yo kid; what's your name and are you going to try out for the basketball team?"

The boy shoots a nervous look at Puckerman but decides to answer him anyway. "Finn. Finn Hudson. And if you tell me when the tryouts are, I'll be glad to be on the team."

He picks up his tray suddenly ready to spend the rest of his lunch not reading the paper like he intended, but tracking down Tanaka so he could get a good look at Hudson and start training him immediately. "I'm going to talk to Tanaka now but I suggest you get ready to run suicides until you puke because congrats Hudson, I think you just made the team." He looks at both of them intently. "I don't know what kind of shenanigans the two of you plan to get up to around here but as long as you keep it off the court, we could use both of you." He walks out of the room, the squeak of his sneakers the only sound in the cafeteria. "See you around Hudson, other guy whose name I can't remember." He's talking to Tanaka not ten minutes later and while he'd never forget the confrontation, he had already forgotten any parts of the conversation that hadn't been Finn Hudson offering to join the basketball team by the time he reached Tanaka's office.

FCI (For Coronado's Information) though: There are a lot of things a popularity play like the one Puckerman tried to pull in his freshmen year can can lead to, knowingly and unknowingly.

If he had known that his pretending to not remember Puckerman's name but making a special effort to act like Hudson's was so important would lead to Hudson becoming Big Man on Campus with Puckerman as his 'Henchmen #1' for the next two years, ultimately causing the always before curbed resentment that flowed from Puckerman toward Hudson to culminate in the impregnation of Quinn Fabray, he probably still wouldn't have wanted Puckerman to agree to go outside because if the self-proclaimed celibacy queen was going bareback, then there was a more serious problem then Puckerman's green-eyed and one-eyed monsters and how they caused him to make crappy decisions.

If he had known that the slight tingly feelings his smile had inspired in Puckerman (which he would have thought pretty fucked up if he'd ever known about it because seriously? Getting hot for the dude who just verbally served you like a bar and grill makes you an instant candidate for Oprah Immersion Therapy in his opinion) would cause him to ruthlessly throw Hummel into the dumpster for the first time that afternoon in order to sublimate his minimal attraction to someone of the same sex and get some of his own back, he would've definitely preferred to have simply broken one of his 20's and splurged for a $3.00 Red Bull so he could beat him down in style.

But if he had known that the scene had brought to Tanaka's attention his initiative in recruiting for the basketball team regardless of personal feelings or high school hierarchy and would later lead to Tanaka and a soon to be graduating senior bestowing upon him the title of co-captain (soon to be Captain when training officially started) not even a day later, even he doesn't know if he would have wanted that to all go down like it did regardless of any butterfly effects it might have caused.

The rest of the day is like stepping into The Twilight Zone. People who have never said a word to him congratulate him on taking a stand. Having spoken enough for the next decade, he merely nods at them and goes back to doing what he's doing at the time. Teachers started looking at him in a new light and girls practically dropped their panties to walk him to his next class. While he doesn't mind female company, he does mind baby-faced Cheerios sniffing around him like they were in heat. So when he sends Quinn Fabray packing the three times she unsubtly tries to hint at him to ask her out that week, he unknowingly causes his reputation as a smooth customer to skyrocket even higher. That afternoon when he sees Puckerman and guys he would come to know as Azimo and Karofsky respectively about to toss some pale little designer-clad boy into the dumpster, its his nonchalant suggestion that maybe they don't want to ruin a perfectly good Marc Jacobs coat by coating it with garbage that convinces the geeks of the school that while he wasn't Captain-Save-A-Chump, he had standards and he wasn't going to join in on the "fun" no matter how much people taunted him to.

But of all of the strange situations that came to be out of his confrontation with Puckerman, if Coronado could change one thing and only one thing, it'd be what happens as a direct cause of him showing Rachel Berry one of the only bits of kindness she had received in her first month of high school.

The next week a skirt-clad girl with long brown hair and a slightly big nose asks him for the entertainment part of his newspaper at lunchtime and when he vaguely notices how cute the little midget is he merely says "Sure sweetheart" in the absentminded way he would one day be known for. He forgets her the moment after he hands her the paper but Fabray would never forget that a boy that wouldn't even give her the time of day called that loudmouthed Berry chick sweetheart in front of half the school. So Quinn started the campaign against Rachel Berry that would one day lead to her unanimous nomination as Head Cheerio but at the time she was simply thinking that she had to act before the unthinkable happened and she got beat to the punch at making what was quickly becoming one of the hottest guys in school her he-bitch.

And even while Quinn Fabray became inspired to draw the first of what would be many pornographic pictures on the bathroom stall of the ladies' first floor restroom, the whole school became convinced that if Coronado could withstand the perpetual annoyance that was Rachel Berry even for a second it meant he was the greatest jock who ever lived, girls were more anxious than ever for him to put himself inside of them when they found out he knew what Marc Jacobs was, Finn Hudson would be seen later on in his brand-spanking new basketball shorts leading to exclamations of "Coronado's the reason we can see his sexy legs!", and Noah Puckerman would spend the next few months cementing his own position in the school as he kept trying to impress him in the worst and most outlandish ways possible just so he could have the slightest reassurance that Coronado could remember his name.

His captaincy of the basketball team, Jacob Ben Israel's stalker tendencies, the respect he commands from classmates and teachers, his student body vice-presidency, almost every single time he's ever had sex with a girl from school, Puckzilla's undeniable reign as the King of Cretins, Finn Hudson's cliche golden-boy status, and the wrath of the Cheerios being almost exclusively focused towards Rachel Berry on a daily basis is all directly thanks to the fact that Joseph Coronado had a conscience and Noah Puckerman wanted to rip it away from him because he didn't.

Almost makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning, doesn't it?

Part 2

The second time he spoke to Rachel Berry happened in what had to be in the most randomest of ways possible.

His mom had asked him to take her car to the only mechanic she trusted; the man he was named after, her brother Joseph. Since Columbus was a decent distance away from Lima, she had given him $200 half of which was for him to use as he pleased. That was perhaps the greatest thing about being an only child; any mad money your mom had left over might go to you if you did little things for her when she asked. He didn't have a problem with going to Columbus and with a hundred dollars, he could have a damn good time. He leaves early enjoying the cool November morning and after dropping off his mom's car at his uncle's garage, he heads out with his uncle's spare car to enjoy his Saturday.

Out of all the places he went that day, and all of the ways he could have met her, and of all the 'Here's how I met Rachel Berry' stories he could have told, none of them are what he would have imagined telling any of the people in his life.

When he tells the story to his mom, they meet in Denny's. She was sitting in the booth next to him and when he asked to borrow her sugar she brings it over instead of making him walk for it. He thanks her and when they're in line after he's done paying the bill for his Grand Slam, he hands her a dollar to cover the 67 cents of her check that she can't. They walk out into the bright morning sun and on a whim, he asks for her number. Her smile is bright as he calls her phone to make sure she has his.

When he tells Kathy, who was wondering why he was spending so much time with a girl if he was enjoying his status as a 'Free Agent' so much, he meets her at the movies. He sits behind her by chance and he cracks up at the accurate remarks she makes regarding the shit-storm that is The New Moon. After 10 minutes of being cinematically eye-raped, he whispers in her ear that they should go sneak into The Blind Side together. Neither of them pay attention to the movie and they spend the next two showings making out just like they did during the first time they sat through it. The only time they break apart is to solemnly swear that they would never have anything to do with Twilight ever again and so he could slip the ushers $10 to let them stay in the theater. The next time he hears from her is when a note falls out of his locker and the only writing says, "Want to go see The Blind Side again?" Other than that, a gold star is the only indication that its Berry. He slips the note in his pocket and walks to class, mind abuzz.(Note to self: Never tell crazy ex-girlfriend's about hypothetical make-out sessions with another girl. Even in his head, that ends badly)

If his uncle Joseph asks, he met her at Barnes and Noble. She was raptly listening to a Nook seminar as he walked by the front counter. He goes to check out the latest volume of Kick-Ass and ends up reading the whole thing twice. Afterward, he goes to get a coffee and when he turns around he spills the hot liquid all over her sweater. Even though they both know its an accident, he still go with her to the unisex washroom and ends up cleaning off a grown person for the second time in his life. And as bad as he feels, he still can't feel too bad that the cat sweater bites the dust. He offers to buy her another shirt and they go to Macy's where he picks out a violet blue nylon blouse that matches the pale pink colored skirt she's wearing. They end up picking out a whole new wardrobe for her and he thanks the lord that the parade of animal sweaters will soon be over by the grace of God forever and ever amen.

When anybody else asks, he'll tell them they met at a food truck. She'd been trying to wheedle the chef into making a vegan dish. Her spanish, while passable, was what his mother liked to call "White Spanish" the kind Mr. Shuester taught. The guy was a Mexican and he was a Spaniard but they managed to understand each other better than he had understood her. Not three minutes later, she has what basically amounts to tortilla with guacamole and salsa on it. She seemed happy enough with it though and she thanked him for helping her translate her request.

None of these stories were true though and if any of them were, it'd be bitch to explain how it led to either of them starting a Call Of Duty cell with Azimo and Karofsky. As awesome as a story he could make up, the reason he doesn't is because in his experience the truth usually comes out. So when his mother asks where he met her he'll say 'In Columbus', when his uncle asks how he met her he'll say 'I went to see a movie' and won't mention the fact that he didn't meet her at the movies, if Kathy asks she's violating the restraining order he has against her, and if anyone else asks he'll look at them and say, 'we do go to school together' and that'll be the end of it.

It takes a month of Rachel incessantly asking before he lets her tell Karofsky how they met and even with the two of them giving just the bare facts, Karofsky had almost pissed his pants as he died laughing rolling around on the floor. Azimo's best friend radar must have pinged from where he had been in Rachel's bathroom because as gross as it was he actually asked Karofsky to tell him what was so hilarious through Rachel's bathroom door. Eventually they both break and tell them both exactly what happened.

After he had gone to Denny's, the movies, Barnes & Noble, and the food truck respectively he had headed to his (no lie) favorite place in the world. In downtown Columbus there was an arcade called Nickelcade. Every game there was either one or two nickels and though you had to pay a flat fee before you could go in, it was totally worth it. They had all of the best old school arcade games there; Street Fighter 2, Pac Man, skeeball, Marvel vs. Capcom, and they even had an old jukebox that was filled with old 80's and 90's music. Whenever he was in Columbus, and had at least $20 on him, this is where he often went.

He goes in and waves at Becky even as he notices what seemed to be a birthday party going on. He heads over to Street Fighter 2 just to warm up his hands. As always, he uses Ryu and whips every other characters ass. Ken, Guile, Blanca; they all get it and he spends 10 minutes working on two nickels. Eventually, the CPU steps up its game so he heads over to the Terminator game; the one with the bulky guns where you had to mow down rows of foot soldier Terminators. You know the ones that go out and cruch skulls under their cold metal feet; the ones that had no skin covering. He can only play that game for a few minutes before he gets creeped out beyond all belief.

He turns the corner and he sees something that changes his life forever. He's not thinking that at the time; he's merely watching what seems to be an enthusiastic game of Dance Dance Revolution. He knows who she is by now; the slushies and the drawings when added to her own personality had made Rachel Berry infamous in their own unique way. She was owning some tall gangly kid as she spun around and hit rapid combinations on the game pad. Her face was luminous and hair flew every which way as she danced. Later on they'll play street fighter 2 and she'll own him with Chung-Li and he'll rack up a ridiculous amount of prize tickets trying (and succeeding) to show her up in skeeball.

They almost get kicked out of the place, they're trash talking each other so bad. When Becky comes over and asks them to keep it down, they decide to spend a while listening to the old jukebox. She sings along softly and he listens to her quiet like he usually is. They'll stay until the place closes and he'll give her a ride home after they go pick up his mom's car so they can continue talking about games they played. She's definitely a modern gamer and the most recent game he's played (chronologically speaking) was Golden Eye on the N64 when he was younger but they decide to meet up at Game Stop the next day.

The rest was history. And maybe his utter outrage at her ability to flay him alive when it came to Street Fighter was hilarious, no matter how hard Azimo and Karofsky had laughed when he told them he was glad he met her the way he did. She won't be some girl whose biill he paid, someone he made out with, a fashion victim he helped save, or a helpless folly to a language barrier he had no problem with. No matter what happened meeting her would always be entertwined with the love he held for the Nickelcade and it was actually kind of fitting since she quickly became his favorite person ever.

As much as he loved his mom and dad, he always felt like an outsider looking in on their relationship. He had no siblings and all of his cousins lived in either Florida or back in Spain. He had teammates and sure, he went to some of the parties and he made out with a couple of the cheerleaders bit he always fells so disconnected form the scene people around him seem to take so much pride in. The games people played made him tired and uneasy. But with Rachel, what you saw was what you got.

She was exactly who she was and it was refreshing. She wasn't secretly a hooligan from 8 to 3 who went home and acted like an angel and she wasn't afraid to let her opinions be known. And she had a lot of them on everything. He likes listening to everything she thinks of because even though she pauses to giive him an opportunity to speak from time to time, she doesn't mind when he doesn't take it. He has no idea who Barbara Streisand was and the moment he said so, she had taken it upon herself to educate him. And he loves that she lets him return the favor. He lends her his copy of The Hobbit and she joyfully debated with him about their favorite parts of the book. They watch Cohen brother movies, go laser tagging, and even go to the planetarium to catch a laser show. He has more fun with her than he's had since he moved to Ohio when he was 12. The team and inter-school politics meant so little in the face of the fact that just because you weren't alone, it didn't mean you weren't lonely.

For the past two years he had been surrounded by countless people who would do anything to get in his good graces. Without doing anything but being herself, Rachel Berry became his favorite person in the world.

Almost enough to make you believe in the power of coincidence, isn't it?

AN2: Ok. Since Glee never really pins down a time-line I'm making one. School at McKinley High starts the last week of August and in my mind, the show starts in the second week of September. Each episode lasts about a week and a half give or take so that means every two episodes about two and a half weeks sometimes closer to three have passed. Oh and in my mind, Coronado and Rachel met right after the events in Ballad (which is the third week of November going by my calculations) and the Kiss (Gaming) Band formed two weeks after Sectionals (which is set right before Christmas break). Bad Reputation (and this fic) is set in late March and Journey happened in May, school letting out in the third week of May.

As always reviews and thoughts on the story are greatly appreciated. 


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